The debate about Artificial Intelligence (AI) reached the educational system. And it is that More and more frequently, girls, boys and adolescents go to ChatGPT for their schoolwork and even to solve exams. What can teachers do in the face of this new challenge? Are traditional teaching and assessment methodologies still effective? How does AI affect everyday life? Does it represent any risk to democratic coexistence? Can the school help prevent this risk? And the families?
Roxana Morduchowiczdoctor in Communication and expert in Digital Citizenship, reflects on this problem in her new book Artificial intelligence. Do we need a new education?published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which can be downloaded for free and It will have its formal presentation on September 19 at 6:30 p.m. at the Argentine Economic Culture Fund (Costa Rica 4568).
What is artificial intelligence?
The UNESCO book defines artificial intelligence as “the design of machines or systems that imitate people’s own cognitive functions, such as perceiving, processing, analyzing, organizing, anticipating, interacting, problem solving and, more recently, creating.” In order to face these tasks, AI is fed and trained with data: the system identifies patterns and probabilities in this data, encodes it, processes it, organizes it and generates a model, which is prepared to make decisions and offer answers to specific instructions.
The problem, warns Morduchowicz in dialogue with Page 12is that there is no transparency and intelligibility regarding the operation of the algorithms and the data with which they have been trained, which they may be wrong or incomplete and therefore help to «reproduce inequalities and perpetuate inequity». For the academic, this is a central drawback, since AI is increasingly present in daily life: “It defines the approval of a visa to enter a certain country, the acceptance or rejection of a bank loan, the selection of a candidate for a job, the granting of a student scholarship and even the allocation of a social subsidy to low-income people,» he exemplifies in his text.
“Education is, without a doubt, the best opportunity to think about AI, analyze it and demand greater transparency”
The great challenge facing this era, then, is to achieve a «fairer and more egalitarian» AI that does not enhance the discrimination systems that currently exist with its biases. And it is the school, according to the main thesis of the book, the institution that can and should take charge of this change: “Education is, without a doubt, the best opportunity to think about AI, analyze it and demand greater transparency”proposes Morduchowicz, who currently advises UNESCO on Digital Citizenship issues.
Ask ChatGPT for homework, the shortcut that more and more students use
The arrival of ChatGPT to classrooms, and other language systems with AI, is a problem that worries education workers around the world. “What has started to happen in recent times is that when a teacher gives a task to his studentsfor example when you ask for a summary based on a text discussed in class, it is that The works that the boys deliver are almost identical to each other, because they ask ChatGPT to do that summary for them. And that is when one begins to ask: What can education do with AI?, since although it is a system that has enormous benefits and great potential, obviously there are uses that not only do not serve the school but that are counterproductive,» says Morduchowicz.
The truth is that many of the obstacles that AI is generating in the classrooms do not arise with this technology «but perhaps they were already there before,» the author acknowledges, noting that what AI does, in any case, is rush the evidence of the problem, which is that “The school continues to give instructions that prioritize memory, copying, linear commentary or summary”.
When a teacher gives an assignment, the work that the kids hand in are almost identical to each other, because they ask ChatGPT to do that summary for them.
Therefore, the first thing to do – says the specialist – «is to rethink the instructions that the teacher gives.» Instead of requiring a summary or copy of a specific question, for example, boys and girls could be asked to evaluate the performance of the AI. “I, as a teacher, can tell them to use ChatGPT to ask for arguments in favor of installing a factory in a neighborhood and that they then evaluate those arguments: to see if they are effective, if they can convince the neighbors and, in Otherwise, what others would they give,” says the communicator.
Another possible exercise that Morduchowicz mentions is to suggest that students ask ChatGPT about a specific fact to see if it matches what they saw in class. “An American teacher, for example, asked his students to use AI to write a report on the history of printing and the students discovered that the smart system did not include information about origins in Europe or China. That class, then, helped the professor to talk about the incomplete, or even false, data that an AI system frequently returns.”, highlights the researcher.
Can school disappear?
The most widespread school model in the world, Morduchowicz recalls, was born with Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. “When this tool was created, an institution that taught reading became necessary. So, For centuries, the goal of the school was to disseminate information«, replies the academic.
Today, with data just a click away, that objective loses strength. «What is needed is a school that prioritizes teaching how to read, analyze, interpret, and evaluate that information, to select only that which one is certain is reliable. A school that understands that information for information’s sake is useless: it can be the starting point, but not the arrival point”, emphasizes Morduchowicz.
And he answers, to those who believe that the teaching role and the school institution are at risk of disappearing due to the advance of AI: «My answer, of course, is that this is not going to happen, as long as the school stops promoting activities and modes of evaluating based exclusively on memory and promoteinstead, abilities linked to critical and creative thinking, knowing how to ask and ask questionsto know how to argue, to solve problems, to be empathetic and to work as a team.
Digital citizenship
In this context of technological explosion, The proposal of UNESCO and the United Nations consists of training teachers so that they can teach their students to make safe, reflective and ethical use of technologies, beyond instrumental use. «The school must train digital citizenswho are those people who know how to identify, understand and respond to the major dilemmas generated by the use of the Internet,” says Morduchowicz.
«We have to teach teachers how to differentiate reliable information from false information; to think about what hate speech is, why it is generated and what to do if I receive it; to reflect on the digital footprint we leave every time we click on the web», lists the Unesco advisor. Furthermore, «I have to teach a teacher how algorithms work, how they operate with biases and discriminations, and also to analyze what decisions the algorithms are making for us. Because I have no problem that a music platform recommends me from from my selection an artist that I don’t know, but I do have a problem if they use my personal information to sell me advertising,” he adds.
All these complexities generated by the use of the Internet, the author suggests, must be addressed through training in digital citizenship that teaches how to recognize the problem and know what to do with it. “Today in the world it is said that there is no full citizenship without digital citizenshipbecause if I don’t know how to distinguish between false information circulating on the web and reliable information, there what is even in danger is democracybecause the personal, social, and civic decisions that people make will be based on dubious information,” he warns with concern.
«The school must train digital citizenswho are those people who know how to identify, understand and respond to the major dilemmas generated by the use of the Internet.”
In the last three years, several countries began to incorporate this issue into their agendas. “I think that what helped raise awareness, although it may seem like a contradiction, was the arrival of pandemicwhen everyone’s lives were transferred to the screen and many of the problems that existed became worse and deeper, such as bullying or fake news,» analyzes the researcher, who highlights in this sense the work of Ministry of Education of Argentinawhich through the Teacher Training Institute is taking this challenge as Public politics.
The UNESCO, meanwhile, closely follows the advance of artificial intelligence around the world. «The organization is committed to supporting Member States in harnessing the potential of AI technologies to achieve the 2030 Education Agenda, while ensures that its application in educational contexts responds to the basic principles of inclusion and equity«, assures in dialogue with Página/12 Ernesto Fernández Polcuch, Director of the UNESCO Regional Office in Montevideo. The objective of this commitment, the official points out, is «to include the role played by AI in the solution of current inequalities in terms of access to knowledge, research and the diversity of cultural expressions, and ensuring that AI does not widen the technological gap within and between countries.
What is the role of families?
Regarding the right time to start training boys and girls in digital citizenship, Morduchowicz considers that it is «ideal start during the last years of primary schoolwhich is when kids, who until then used technology to play or communicate, start using the Internet for homework, something that of course intensifies in high school.»
In this growth, families play a fundamental role. “One of the most important challenges is to be aware of the use that your sons and daughters make of screens. Today it is very popular in homes to ask kids ‘How did your language or math test go?’, but it is much less common to ask them ‘What did you do on the Internet today?’. And this is a fundamental question: ‘What made you angry, what distressed you, what did you not understand, what amused you? Did you use it to answer school homework? In what way?’”, highlights the author of the Unesco book.
It is no use, says Morduchowicz about the restrictive methodology applied in schools and many homes, to prohibit the use of technology. “I always prefer to teach thinking before prohibiting it. «I don’t need to ban any technology if I show my students how it works, what it is for, what its risks are, what its unethical uses are,» he insists.
“Of course, if a mother or father sees that their child does not leave the room and is using screens all day, I am going to put some limitations there. But I’m not going to oppose it as a philosophy. It is preferable to teach to reflect, to analyze, to talk with the child or adolescent about the uses: what is the time to connect, what is the time to disconnect, what we can do without screens. Always prioritize dialogue and critical thinking over any prohibition”, concludes Morduchowicz.